I was amused by the flying Pinto, thanks for including it. There have been +quite a few hybrids offered over the years but it does not seem that any have been sucessful. Probably the fundamental concept is flawed, since the only similarity is that both are methods of transportation. But the fundamental requirements are so very disparate that any combination would either not fly or else not be at all roadworthy. Besides that, entirely different skill sets are required for each mode. So really this is a concept that just is not able to work.

I've ridden one of the "Ducks" before; you can ride them in Branson, Missouri. As to your comment about the water/land transition not being seamless, I disagree. We stopped at the top of a boat ramp for a few seconds, then we rolled straight down into the water at a surprisingly high speed (I was sitting in the back and got soaked from the splash). True, it wasn't that fast on the water, but it wasn't designed to be. To exit the lake, we just drove straight up a boat ramp, paused a couple of seconds at the top (probably to disengage the prop), then drove away.

If they would retrofit them with waterjets, I think it would make a tremendous difference in their speed on the water.

The second life game, or whatever it was, apparently never even reached my awareness at whetever time it appeared. Who needs a completely useless way to waste time, really?

Likewise that Nintendo offering.Who needs it? Although if it did offer a video projector function and sold for $180 that might have made the hardware worthwhile, possibly.

Why didn't the microsoft offerings ever catch on? I guess that bill gates has no concept of how many decent people despise him and everything that he is associated with. Perhaps he should seek to gain a clue, although he has done so much damage that can't be repaired that it is unlikely he would ever be accepted.

Elizabeth, the failure of DAT was, as I see it, also caused by the recording industry delaying the relaese and forcing it to be incompatrible with the CD recording mode. In fact, the DAT system would have probably been a better choice simply because it would have allowed anybody to easily make perfect recordings. but the recording industry demanded, and got, all kinds of limits put on the DAT system, which, aside from delaying it a year or more also reduced the usefulness a whole lot. So in reality DAT was murdered by the RIAA and the other groups.

This is a good list, but i must have slept through the hype on a few of these things! Yes, i still have a BetaMax machine, but CueCat?! What? Never heard of it; it looks hilarious, tho. I guess if you're computer has a mouse, it needs a cat! :-D

A fairly tragic invention that didn't live up to the hype was the Duckboat. This is a small military truck that you could drive out onto water, & was used a little in WWII, i think. It was the worst of both truck and boat, tho - really ponderous on land and almost stationary on water. You could swim faster, & the transition from land to water & back again was not seamless. And it was LOUD. Troops on water in these things were easy targets; it's where we got the term "sitting ducks."

Interesting article. I forgot about some of them. A good follow up article would be the flip side, i.e. technologies that have been declared dead only to live on and on. Hard drives and 8 bit micros come to mind.

Great collection Liz. Whenever I see someone walking around wearing a JawBone type headset, I think of the Star Trek Borg, a civilization that is unable to think or act on their own and a need to be connected with the Collective to function. I feel sorry when I see someone needing to be constantly connected with their decision makers. I think somewhat the same when I see photos of people wearing a Google Glass, but with an added fear of George Orwell. Borg and Orwell, what a combination.

The first known electric car was built in 1837 by Robert Davidson of Aberdeen. It was powered by galvanic cells (batteries). Davidson later built a larger locomotive named Galvani, exhibited at the Royal Scottish Society of Arts Exhibition in 1841.

Yes, the Newton almost made it to the list, but I thought there were maybe bigger flops than that.

And you are indeed very right about the Pinto. I actually almost included on the list the Pinto model that exploded if hit from behind, but didn't. So I think it's quite ironic that someone would use that particular car model to make a hybrid car/plane. I am sure there had to be better options out there at the time!

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

Focus on Fundamentals consists of 45-minute on-line classes that cover a host of technologies. You learn without leaving the comfort of your desk. All classes are taught by subject-matter experts and all are archived. So if you can't attend live, attend at your convenience.